Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part three
Speaker 3: in our series on the Swaro cactus of the Sonoran Desert.
Speaker 3: Now this is part three. This is a series where
Speaker 3: this episode will make a lot more sense if you
Speaker 3: go back and listen to the previous two episodes first,
Speaker 3: but do briefly refresh. In the past couple of episodes,
Speaker 3: we talked about the natural anthromorphism of the swarrow, We
Speaker 3: talked about how slowly it grows, we talked about its
Speaker 3: biological adaptations for surviving in extremely arid conditions, and we
Speaker 3: also talked a bit about its history and nomenclature. And
Speaker 3: today we're back to finish up the discussion. But before
Speaker 3: we get into the meat of today's episode, rob I
Speaker 3: wanted to briefly come back to a question that I
Speaker 3: asked you in part two. Since you have recently visited
Speaker 3: the Sonoran Desert. You were there among these cacti and
Speaker 3: you went hiking, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Yes, a couple of times? Yeah, Okay, so.
Speaker 3: You're out in sorrow country. They're all around, Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: And I asked if you noticed the cacti making any
Speaker 3: noticeable sounds. The main thing I was actually wondering was
Speaker 3: do they creak like trees in a forest when the
Speaker 3: wind blows. I couldn't get a very clear answer on that.
Speaker 3: Some people kind of say they do, just googling, But
Speaker 3: in the time since the last episode, I went looking
Speaker 3: up questions about whether sorrows make sounds, and in one
Speaker 3: sense the answer is yes, because the main thing I
Speaker 3: actually came across was a post from the National Parks
Speaker 3: Trust talking about how when the wind blows, if you
Speaker 3: stand close to a sorrow, you will hear a hissing
Speaker 3: or high whistling sound, which is apparently caused by the
Speaker 3: wind into flowing around its ribs and through its spines.
Speaker 3: Sot a whistling cactus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wish I had thought to listen for this. Namely,
Speaker 2: the soundscape that I remember is, you know, more like
Speaker 2: the you know, we would hear the wind and the breeze, rather,
Speaker 2: you know, the crunch of rocks and pebbles beneath one's feet,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Bugs, insects, sometimes bees.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is generally true about the desert,
Speaker 3: but just from personal experience, I remember being in the
Speaker 3: desert in the American Southwest was one of the quietest
Speaker 3: places I ever remember being in nature. So I, you know,
Speaker 3: did some hikes when we were in Big Ben National
Speaker 3: Park in Texas, and that's a beautiful desert landscape, but
Speaker 3: I remember it being quite striking. There were times when
Speaker 3: I would like hike out and you know, the middle
Speaker 3: of a trail out there'd be very hot and I
Speaker 3: heard just like nothing. It was like more quiet than
Speaker 3: I ever remember anything being anywhere outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a stillness and to it, for sure,
Speaker 2: And you know, some of the hikes we were doing,
Speaker 2: we were not that far from civilization and you could
Speaker 2: you could see it. You could see like the housing
Speaker 2: developments in the distance and so forth. But even then
Speaker 2: there was still something secluded feeling about it. And some
Speaker 2: of that might tie into some of the details about
Speaker 2: the environment that we'll get to here in a bit.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 3: So I know, later in today's episode, we wanted to
Speaker 3: focus on human uses of the sorrow and its many products,
Speaker 3: but before we get to that, I wanted to briefly
Speaker 3: take a detour to look into a biological mystery about
Speaker 3: the soorro and some atypical soorrow anatomy, and this concerns
Speaker 3: what's known as the crystate or crested soorrow. So in
Speaker 3: the first episode we talked a lot about the anthropomorphic
Speaker 3: shape of the cactus. Who's got this straight column in
Speaker 3: the middle like a central tree trunk. And then when
Speaker 3: the in the case of a mature plant, it usually
Speaker 3: has arms branching out from the central column and then
Speaker 3: a single point at the top. So the central column
Speaker 3: just goes straight up and then it terminates in a
Speaker 3: slightly tapered, rounded tip. But on rare occasions, instead of
Speaker 3: a central column or a branch terminating in this round,
Speaker 3: tapered tip, it spreads out, sometimes wildly at the top,
Speaker 3: like a fan or like a peacock's tail. So I've
Speaker 3: got some pictures of this for you to look at
Speaker 3: in the outline here, Rob. And so this can happen
Speaker 3: to the central column of the cactus, to the trunk,
Speaker 3: or to any of the cactus's limbs. And this is
Speaker 3: especially interesting when paired with the human anatomical analogy, because
Speaker 3: a crested central column can look very much like a
Speaker 3: crown or maybe hair or a hat, while a crust
Speaker 3: the limb can look like a waving hand on one
Speaker 3: of the arms. So in most of the pictures you
Speaker 3: see when you do an image search, this crest is
Speaker 3: at the top of the central column or at the
Speaker 3: end of a limb. But a cactus doesn't necessarily or
Speaker 3: doesn't even usually stop growing when it develops a crest,
Speaker 3: so quite often you will see further columns or limbs
Speaker 3: growing well out of the fan formation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very impressive looking. It almost kind of takes
Speaker 2: on a more of a coral appearance, or I guess
Speaker 2: you could compare it to psychedelic art in some respects
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a kind of wild, fractal radiating pattern. So interesting
Speaker 3: historical fact, the first known photograph of a crested suarrow
Speaker 3: comes from an unexpected place, not Arizona, but Chicago in
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety three at the World's Columbian Exposition, also known
Speaker 3: as the eighteen ninety three Chicago World's Fair, which we've
Speaker 3: done whole episodes about in the past. So this was
Speaker 3: a weird, fascinating historical event with lots of strange exhibits,
Speaker 3: you know, some very ahead of their time. And others
Speaker 3: kind of quaint historical oddities now, but one of the
Speaker 3: exhibits here was what was known as an Arizona Territory display.
Speaker 3: Oh so, they had shipped a bunch of flora from
Speaker 3: Arizona to Chicago for this display, and one of the
Speaker 3: cacti that they harvested and brought to Chicago's for the
Speaker 3: people to see is a was a rare crested sorrow.
Speaker 3: And I've got a picture for you to look at
Speaker 3: in the outline here, Rob, So we've got a black
Speaker 3: and white photo with this big house with columns and
Speaker 3: then all of this Arizona plant life positioned out front
Speaker 3: in the garden, including some regular soarro cactus right just
Speaker 3: you know, just regular looking columns. But then one of
Speaker 3: them is this beautiful strange fan shape right at the top.
Speaker 3: And they I was watching a section about this in
Speaker 3: a PBS documentary and it mentions that the cactus, we
Speaker 3: don't know what happened to it, but it almost certainly
Speaker 3: died from this transportation process, especially once exposed to the
Speaker 3: cold weather in Chicago.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I mean just the process of moving
Speaker 2: it and trying to replant it as almost certain doom.
Speaker 2: Here I was doing a little reading about this yesterday,
Speaker 2: about the various protections that are in place for the
Speaker 2: soarros in Arizona especially, you know, you know, to keep
Speaker 2: people from messing with them, harvesting them, moving them, you know,
Speaker 2: unless there is a you know, a certified reason for
Speaker 2: it and you have a permit for it, because yeah,
Speaker 2: they're just not gonna just can't do this with the
Speaker 2: full grown soorrow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, rip to that crested tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But I mean you can see they're like roped in place, really.
Speaker 3: Shackles around it. Yeah. But fortunately, despite the fact that
Speaker 3: they are pretty rare, this was not the only one.
Speaker 3: There are you know, hundreds or maybe thousands of these
Speaker 3: things out there, and they are actually people who they
Speaker 3: make it a hobby. They're like crested toorrow hunters. So
Speaker 3: they go out hiking in touarrow country and try to
Speaker 3: find and document the locations of known crested plants. And
Speaker 3: we should note that suarrows are not the only species
Speaker 3: that occasionally develop crested tips. This is seen in other
Speaker 3: columnar cacti as well, but the suarow is the one
Speaker 3: where it is the most visually striking and mysterious and
Speaker 3: according to all of the sources I was reading, biologists
Speaker 3: still do not fully agree on what causes the cresting pattern,
Speaker 3: so this is somewhat an unsolved mystery. I was reading
Speaker 3: about the hypothesized causes in a few different places, like
Speaker 3: the There's a fact page by the National Park Service
Speaker 3: that identifies a few leading hypotheses. One is that I
Speaker 3: think this is an older way of thinking, is that
Speaker 3: it's the result of some kind of physical trauma. Like
Speaker 3: an older idea was that there were like lightning strikes.
Speaker 3: Maybe when lightning hits a cactus, it starts cresting. From
Speaker 3: what I can tell, this is maybe not very widely
Speaker 3: subscribed to by biologists anymore. Another idea was injury from
Speaker 3: frost could cause this. But a different idea is that
Speaker 3: it is caused by a genetic mutation. And I was
Speaker 3: watching a short documentary on the crested suarows hosted by PBS,
Speaker 3: which includes interviews with a sorrow expert named Bill peache
Speaker 3: and Peachey explains that the soarow's normal growth. He kind
Speaker 3: of compares it to blowing up a party animal balloon,
Speaker 3: so like a long balloon, you know. He says, it's
Speaker 3: a long tube that grows by unfolding at the growth tip,
Speaker 3: and as it unfolds here it creates these plats or
Speaker 3: ribs that we see along the outside of the cactus,
Speaker 3: which hosts the spine clusters. And of course those clusters
Speaker 3: can later turn into flowers and fruit can But these
Speaker 3: plats can also have developments that turn into branches, you know,
Speaker 3: they branch out and turn into limbs. And Peache says, quote,
Speaker 3: what's happening is the control mechanism for what causes the
Speaker 3: number of pleats is out of control. So instead of
Speaker 3: occasionally branching, there are multiple branches on a crest and
Speaker 3: it keeps branching until it can't branch anymore. So that's
Speaker 3: his idea of what's going on with the growth pattern.
Speaker 3: But what exactly is the underlying cause?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: What goes back one step from that. Peache argues that
Speaker 3: the reason the fleet growth goes out of control is
Speaker 3: due to a hormonal malfunction. So he thinks that the
Speaker 3: growth batter, the original growth pattern is determined by like
Speaker 3: a hormonal balance, and sometimes that hormonal control malfunctions. And
Speaker 3: the reason he cites for thinking this is that the
Speaker 3: out of control crested growth is not necessarily permanent. Once
Speaker 3: it starts, it can turn on and off, and he
Speaker 3: points as evidence of this, He points to examples of
Speaker 3: cacti where you get a cresting pattern start and then
Speaker 3: for some reason it stops, and then there is a
Speaker 3: normal stem or branch growth coming out of the crest
Speaker 3: which just continues to grow normally after that. And Rob,
Speaker 3: I've got a picture you can look at in the
Speaker 3: outline here. Yeah, it's a mature saro with some branches
Speaker 3: down below, and then up at the top there is
Speaker 3: a crested section and then out of the crest are
Speaker 3: actually branching to what looked like normal branches or central trunks.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's Peachey's theory. But again, from what I
Speaker 3: can tell, experts still do not fully agree on the explanation.
Speaker 3: So there remains something of a mystery about the crests.
Speaker 3: But one thing that we do know is it's not
Speaker 3: a fatal condition. So you know, you might think a
Speaker 3: cactus like, oh, it's doing something very rare and strange
Speaker 3: that's causing alterations of its growth. You might think, well,
Speaker 3: this cactus is doomed. I mean, I guess every plant
Speaker 3: will die eventually, But a cactus with crested growth patterns
Speaker 3: can go on living for a long time and it
Speaker 3: appears to be otherwise healthy. It can produce flowers and
Speaker 3: fruit and go on growing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just kind of look like the zombies in
Speaker 2: the Last of Us.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, the clickers. Yeah yeah, crest on the head. Now,
Speaker 3: there's one more thing I wanted to mention. That was
Speaker 3: you actually gave me the idea to look into this,
Speaker 3: rob It's the so called soworrow boot. If you see
Speaker 3: one of these things on its own, you might wonder
Speaker 3: how does this come from a cactus. You might not
Speaker 3: understand how it fits into cactus biology because it looks
Speaker 3: often like a strange wooden or barkie picture or jug. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but what's cool is that these structures are actually formed
Speaker 3: inside the sorrow as a result of excavation by birds.
Speaker 3: So they are a defense mechanism that forms in reaction
Speaker 3: to tissue trauma that later can take on lives of
Speaker 3: their own.
Speaker 2: And this is definitely something that you see a lot
Speaker 2: when you walk among the soaro as you see this
Speaker 2: tissue damage from and you see actual sites of birds'
Speaker 2: nests in the cactus yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The way this works is many birds make nests in
Speaker 3: the flesh of the swarow, for example, the HeLa woodpecker
Speaker 3: or the gilded flicker. These birds will pick a spot
Speaker 3: high up on the trunk or on a branch, and
Speaker 3: they use their beaks to dig out a hollow in
Speaker 3: the plant's flesh. So the souarro is tough, but these
Speaker 3: birds they've got specialized tough beaks and they dig into
Speaker 3: the flesh and make a hole. And coming back to
Speaker 3: the complexity of the you know, the kind of many
Speaker 3: faceted help and harm relationships in the desert that we
Speaker 3: talked about last time. That was in the context of
Speaker 3: suarrows and their nurse plants. I was reading in the
Speaker 3: Yetman at All book that we've talked about in the
Speaker 3: past couple of episodes. In fact, we should give the
Speaker 3: full citation again right now. This is the book The
Speaker 3: Soorro Cactus, a Natural History by David Yetman, Alberto Berquez,
Speaker 3: Kevin Holteen, and Michael Sanderson from the University of Arizona Press,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. But in this book, the authors have a
Speaker 3: section about the soorrow boot and they're talking about the
Speaker 3: relationships between these birds that peck holes in the side
Speaker 3: of the cactus and the cactus itself, and they say, actually,
Speaker 3: the birds might simultaneously help and harm the cactus. So
Speaker 3: the harm is pretty easy to understand. They're digging a
Speaker 3: hole in your flesh. But the book points out they
Speaker 3: may serve as minor pollinators for the cactus flowers and
Speaker 3: as vectors for dispersing the fruit seeds. And the authors
Speaker 3: also mention that the birds may protect the sooro in
Speaker 3: a way by eating larva from diseased plant tissue near
Speaker 3: the nest.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: However, the plant responds to this attack on its tissue
Speaker 3: by the birds, so it can't stop the bird from
Speaker 3: digging a hole in its side, but it reacts to
Speaker 3: a hole being dug by forming this dense, hard layer
Speaker 3: of what the authors call callous or scar tissue around
Speaker 3: the inside surface of the cavity.
Speaker 2: So it's like, you know, the bird digs a.
Speaker 3: Hole in the cactus, and then all around the inner
Speaker 3: skin of that hole, the cactus is like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to make tough tissue now, you know. So this hard
Speaker 3: or tough inner layer of woody flesh remains after the
Speaker 3: bird leaves, and then it may be subsequently repurposed by
Speaker 3: other wildlife, like another bird comes along, like an owl
Speaker 3: or a kestrel and makes a nest in this vacated
Speaker 3: sawarow boot. But then after the cactus itself dies, this
Speaker 3: tough inner cavity remains as a kind of bark like
Speaker 3: jug or bowl. And this is this is what we
Speaker 3: end up calling the cactus boot. So the barkie boot
Speaker 3: stays even after the decomposition of the cactus. And in fact,
Speaker 3: historically these boots have been repurposed by humans. So I
Speaker 3: was reading about this in a few sources, but the
Speaker 3: Arizona Sonora Desert Museum mentions that the thana Authum, the Epima,
Speaker 3: and the Seri people all have traditions of repurposing the
Speaker 3: salvaged boots as water containers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not as boots, to be clear, but we call
Speaker 2: them boots. I don't think anybody's wearing these on their feet,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's like it becomes a natural water reservoir.
Speaker 2: By the way, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, located near Tucson,
Speaker 2: is excellent. I've been there a couple of times. It
Speaker 2: is a museum, but you might think of it more
Speaker 2: as a botanical garden in a way like it's mostly
Speaker 2: outdoors and you're walking among the different plants. There's some
Speaker 2: animal demonstrations as well. You can see some halina. It's
Speaker 2: a wonderful place, So I reckon it's another place I
Speaker 2: recommend if you're visiting the Tucson area, the Holy Heavily. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, well let's continue with this discussion of human
Speaker 2: beings and the soaro. So well, you know, obviously relatively
Speaker 2: new classification to Western science. This we discussed in the
Speaker 2: first episode, but the native peoples of the Sonoran Desert
Speaker 2: obviously knew about the soaro for millennia, and they had
Speaker 2: different names for it. So the thana Apham called it
Speaker 2: the hashan or hassan, and they derive multiple resources from
Speaker 2: the cactus. We'll discuss some of these, but food, drink, lumber, tools,
Speaker 2: and shade. The coastal Sonoran people called the Seri call
Speaker 2: it the Mohepe, and the southern Sonoran Maos and Yaquis
Speaker 2: people called it the Sagwo. I may be mispronouncing this,
Speaker 2: but it's sag u o and this would be where
Speaker 2: we get sa g u a r o soar from.
Speaker 2: So this would this seems to be where we get
Speaker 2: the main name for this organism. Now, colonial recognition of
Speaker 2: the suarro was ultimately sketchy and limited. We got into
Speaker 2: that a little bit. The authors of these Soarro cactus
Speaker 2: point out that for a long time the Sonoran Desert
Speaker 2: was just difficult country for the Spanish. He was far
Speaker 2: from Mexico City, and people who ventured here generally encountered
Speaker 2: less than friendly receptions from native people's And so the
Speaker 2: sowaro is often briefly described it's looped in with other cacti.
Speaker 2: And there were plenty of Spanish botanists that were interested
Speaker 2: in the cacti of the Americas, but their work tended
Speaker 2: to focus on species outside of this far flung and
Speaker 2: difficult country. Now, coming back to the thana Aphem, there,
Speaker 2: of course natives of the Sonoran Desert, and they occupied
Speaker 2: these lands when Europeans first ventured there. They reside here still,
Speaker 2: though their lands in society were artificially divided by colonial influences.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to be referring to an older work
Speaker 2: of scholarship, and I may fall into past tense a
Speaker 2: little bit talking about some of these practices, but I
Speaker 2: do want to stress at the top here that we're
Speaker 2: discussing the people who are still very much around and
Speaker 2: still very very active in the world, so they do
Speaker 2: not exist in the past tense. So obviously they have
Speaker 2: a lot of experience with the Suaro and it has
Speaker 2: an important place in their culture. That University of Arizona
Speaker 2: book we've been referencing includes a paper titled the Annual
Speaker 2: Soarro Harvest and Crop Cycle of the Papago with reference
Speaker 2: to Ecology and Symbolism, and this was by Frank S.
Speaker 2: Cross White, which David Yetman explains. The title here uses
Speaker 2: a now outdated Spanish name for the thana Athham people.
Speaker 2: They moved away from this title in a firmer sense
Speaker 2: about the same time that the paper came out, or
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit after, so it's a nineteen eighty paper,
Speaker 2: but the name issue aside, is still rather informative and
Speaker 2: is considered like a foundational work. So cross White wrote
Speaker 2: that the thana Apham were very connected with the environment,
Speaker 2: and their charting and perception of time is very much
Speaker 2: based and is in tune with the ebb and flow
Speaker 2: of the natural world, as you might expect, and as
Speaker 2: far as the sowarrow is concerned for them. June is
Speaker 2: soorrow harvest month, the time during which they'd harvest, process,
Speaker 2: and eat the fruit of this mighty cactus. May is
Speaker 2: the month when soarrow's seeds are turning black in the
Speaker 2: developing fruit, the painful month that still invokes optimism for
Speaker 2: the coming harvest, and as early as March, rituals are
Speaker 2: performed and were performed to ensure a good harvest to follow.
Speaker 2: Some of these rituals involved the grinding of soorrow seeds
Speaker 2: and placing the results in a basket with quote four
Speaker 2: pieces of rib from a soaro skeleton, one at each
Speaker 2: cardinal point. And then they're singing. There's divination and there
Speaker 2: is a consumption of the seeds. And it's here that
Speaker 2: he connects this with He points out that he's uncertain
Speaker 2: if the basket was buried in this ritual, but he
Speaker 2: connects it possibly to a particular resurrection legend concerning the
Speaker 2: sowarro that I found quite beautiful and ties in with
Speaker 2: someone like the deeper mythic anthropomorphism involved with the soarro.
Speaker 2: So basically the story goes as follows. In this legend,
Speaker 2: you have a child and this child somehow sinks into
Speaker 2: the ground. I don't know, they're like pulled into the ground,
Speaker 2: they fall into the ground, but at any rate, now
Speaker 2: they are underground. The child's is concerned, and she turns
Speaker 2: to the trickster coyote to help dig the child out.
Speaker 2: She's like, coyote, can come help me dig my child out. Coyote,
Speaker 2: of course, is a trickster spirit or deity pops up
Speaker 2: in a number of different indigenous belief systems. So okay,
Speaker 2: Coyote agrees to help, but coyote secretly eats the child
Speaker 2: during the rescue operation and then gives the remaining bones
Speaker 2: to the child's mother and just tells her, Hey, someone
Speaker 2: must have eaten your son. This is all I could find.
Speaker 2: The mother is, of course heartbroken by this, and she
Speaker 2: asks coyote to bury the bones for her, and he
Speaker 2: does so, and from that burial spot the first sorrow arises.
Speaker 3: Interesting, so this creates some deep essential connection between humankind
Speaker 3: and the sorrows, like the human being is at the
Speaker 3: roots of the cactus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and so so this seems to like
Speaker 2: tie in rather deeply for the fauna awthhum people, where
Speaker 2: the sonarrows are connected to human ancestors there's a human
Speaker 2: heritage at play, like in a sense they are people
Speaker 2: or there is a connection to us. I don't know,
Speaker 2: It's one of those things that you know, English language
Speaker 2: may be struggles to put it exactly in the right
Speaker 2: words that would be accurate. But I was reading that
Speaker 2: in I believe twenty twenty one, the Fauna Awpham Nation
Speaker 2: passed a resolution to grant soarro's legal personhood. And also
Speaker 2: just there's a reminder, Arizona, under state law has it
Speaker 2: illegal to cut down, damage, or move a soarrow cactus
Speaker 2: without a permit, So they enjoy protection on multiple fronts
Speaker 2: within the region of what is now Arizona.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yet yet another reason not to go into the
Speaker 3: desert shooting them, as we dissessed in part one.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I mean I thought back on that story too,
Speaker 2: Like when you consider the idea that the native inhabitants
Speaker 2: of this area saw these cacti as being you know,
Speaker 2: ancestors in a certain sense, you know, is having is
Speaker 2: being so vitally connected with people, Like it makes it
Speaker 2: even more offensive that somebody would go out and like
Speaker 2: ram their car into one on purpose, or shoot it
Speaker 2: on purpose and try to mess with it or drag
Speaker 2: it to a World's Fair in chicag Right. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: So let's come back to this harvest. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of detail given in this paper about the harvest,
Speaker 2: what it historically entailed, and also how it changed a
Speaker 2: bit with the advent of technology and so forth. But
Speaker 2: historically it entailed setting up a camp, like a temporary
Speaker 2: camp among the suaro in the rocky foothills. So again,
Speaker 2: this is not an area where the people would be
Speaker 2: staying year round. They would come here only for the harvest,
Speaker 2: and they'd have to bring everything they'd need to survive,
Speaker 2: including water from their winter camping locations that they had
Speaker 2: been at previously.
Speaker 3: So I apologize if you already said this, But would
Speaker 3: this be in the summertime, because that's when the main
Speaker 3: fruiting is happening. Yes, yekay, yeah, so I imagine it's hot. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's hot. They have to make sure they have water,
Speaker 3: because again we already touched on, you can't drink water
Speaker 3: from the soaro, not at least not if you're trying
Speaker 3: to avoid having disastrous vomiting and diarrhea in the desert.
Speaker 3: So they don't drink the water, they bring the water
Speaker 3: they have to bring all the water that they're going
Speaker 3: to use for their own consumption and for the processing
Speaker 3: of the fruit, which we'll get into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also pointed out that one of the
Speaker 2: big things about it too is this is a highly
Speaker 2: social event, so sometimes you know they're timing it so
Speaker 2: they're arriving just a little early, so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of socialization and anticipation of the fruit harvest. So usually
Speaker 2: it eventually anyway, they'd use horses and wagons and still
Speaker 2: later trucks, but originally all this would be carried out
Speaker 2: on foot water to drink again water for cactus fruit preparation,
Speaker 2: dried jack rabbit beans, and then the author points out
Speaker 2: by the nineteen seventies you would have things like spaghetti
Speaker 2: and cold cuts, you know, whatever was more readily available,
Speaker 2: and the grinding stones and the poles that were important
Speaker 2: for the harvesting and processing. These would remain at the
Speaker 2: site year round, so I think they would bury the
Speaker 2: stone and the poles would just be kind of like
Speaker 2: placed to the side, and also the olas, the ceramic
Speaker 2: pots that they'd use. I think they would also try
Speaker 2: and keep these on sites so they wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: drag these in, especially again in a time when they
Speaker 2: weren't using trucks or weren't even using horses and wagons.
Speaker 3: Right, So you'd store the tools of industry because it's
Speaker 3: not practical or even necessary to take them back and.
Speaker 2: Forth, right and like apparently nobody's going to mess with them,
Speaker 2: you know, for the most part. And it's also detailed
Speaker 2: that there was like a fascinating ritual to it here
Speaker 2: that also gets back to this human connection with the cactus.
Speaker 2: Apparently each person involved in the harvest was supposed to
Speaker 2: take the first fruit they harvested, open it up, and
Speaker 2: I would describe before how it's like this like red
Speaker 2: pink pulpyness to it, and it's juicy. They would rip
Speaker 2: this open and then they would apply that red pulp
Speaker 2: to their heart, giving a prayer of thanks. So this
Speaker 2: like association between the fruit of the cactus and blood
Speaker 2: and the heart, you know, it's all rather striking, and
Speaker 2: it seems like other peoples surrounding peoples that would engage
Speaker 2: in some level of harvesting of the soaro fruit would
Speaker 2: also have engage in a similar practice. Joe I included
Speaker 2: a photograph for you here various Photographs can be found
Speaker 2: online of the fruit of the soarrow being opened up.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you can see that it has a you know,
Speaker 2: it's fleshy. It looks like paint or red, and you
Speaker 2: see all those little tiny black seeds, which I'm to understand.
Speaker 2: The seeds have slightly oily taste, and the flesh is
Speaker 2: often described to you know, as you know, it sweet,
Speaker 2: and certainly once it's been processed, it takes on almost
Speaker 2: like a raspberry jam kind of consistency. But it also
Speaker 2: can certainly be eaten like straight at harvest, to be
Speaker 2: eaten raw, and that is one way that it is
Speaker 2: enjoyed on site.
Speaker 3: But in some of the pictures you can see the seeds.
Speaker 3: It's not like a few large seeds like you might
Speaker 3: I don't know in watermelon or something. It's like swarming
Speaker 3: with many smaller seeds, so it can look kind of
Speaker 3: like ants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a lot of seeds in there. Now, the
Speaker 2: I mentioned the poles because again, these the fruit are
Speaker 2: high up on the cactus, so how are you gonna
Speaker 2: get those down. You're not bringing step ladders out, you're
Speaker 2: not bringing scaffolding out. You climb, you can't really climb
Speaker 2: the cactus, So what are you going to do? Well,
Speaker 2: they had these poles and they were called I think
Speaker 2: coupad is the word. And according to the National Park Service,
Speaker 2: they were traditionally constructed out of sowaro ribs. Because remember,
Speaker 2: this is the Kingdom of the Suarrow, this is the
Speaker 2: forest of the Suaro. There's nothing if you're looking for
Speaker 2: tree branches or hanging around that are going to be
Speaker 2: long enough to use. I mean, there's nothing really out
Speaker 2: there as tall as the Solaro, So it makes sense
Speaker 2: to use the ribs of dead ones.
Speaker 3: Makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, included a picture here for you to refer to, Joe,
Speaker 2: but you people can find picks online. There's a Good
Speaker 2: Trust for Public Land article from twenty twenty five detailing
Speaker 2: the practice, leaning heavily on the multi generational knowledge of
Speaker 2: Thana Atham Member A Nation member Tanisha Tucker, and the
Speaker 2: article describes that these poles were lightweight, which is good
Speaker 2: because you're going to be holding them up for hours
Speaker 2: at a time during the harvest. They tend to be
Speaker 2: about twenty feet long, with a cross piece at the
Speaker 2: top of the pole that's used to hook the fruits.
Speaker 2: Cross white chairs that sometimes three ribs were used instead
Speaker 2: of two, and you know, obviously later on other materials
Speaker 2: end up being used as well if they become available,
Speaker 2: if they're brought in. But this is the traditional way,
Speaker 2: and this tradition is still practiced to this day. Now.
Speaker 2: As for the fruits themselves, Tucker describes them as a
Speaker 2: true desert superfood full of minerals and antioxidants. But they
Speaker 2: don't last, so the bounty has to be either consumed
Speaker 2: raw on site, and apparently there's a lot of that,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I think it's She points out
Speaker 2: that the best ones you eat while you harvest, You
Speaker 2: pull down a really nice one, don't save it for process,
Speaker 2: and you just go ahead and eat it at that moment.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean that makes sense with a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, fruits and crops, right like yeah, like
Speaker 3: a like a good crisp apple is great on its own.
Speaker 3: If there's one that's not so good, that can be
Speaker 3: apple sauce or apple juice or whatever.
Speaker 2: I always feel bad doing this harvesting strawberries, like recreational
Speaker 2: strawberry harvesting, you know where you go out to the
Speaker 2: strawberry farm and you pay them pick your own with
Speaker 2: a bucket. I always feel bad if I eat a
Speaker 2: really juicy one, like on the spot. I don't know,
Speaker 2: because I guess I haven't paid for it yet either.
Speaker 2: There's that, but but that is also the temptation, and
Speaker 2: I think maybe it speaks to something deeper in us,
Speaker 2: in our our fruit gathering past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean thinking about it these days, usually
Speaker 3: when people talk about processed foods, there that's spoken with
Speaker 3: a negative connotation because you're talking people are talking about
Speaker 3: nutritional concerns about ultra processed foods or something. But I
Speaker 3: would say, you know, across all different food traditions, in
Speaker 3: a way, processed foods are a great way to make
Speaker 3: use of less than ideal you know, pieces of fruit
Speaker 3: or vegetable or something like that. You know it might
Speaker 3: not be attractive in its whole form, but you can
Speaker 3: still turn it into some downstream processed product where you
Speaker 3: can't tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also the key thing too here being that
Speaker 2: it's something that will keep because the primary sowarow fruit
Speaker 2: products end up being like a kind of a jelly
Speaker 2: or syrup as well as candies and a ceremonial wine,
Speaker 2: and the syrup slash jelly in particular, like that is
Speaker 2: something that they can store away in earthenware containers, which
Speaker 2: can then be buried or stored up on a like
Speaker 2: a high beam or something, and this is something they
Speaker 2: can continue to eat even through the winter months, and
Speaker 2: it's the primary sweetener traditionally that they would have to
Speaker 2: take advantage of. The wine would be highly ceremonial and important,
Speaker 2: again tying into the the social, ritual community aspects of
Speaker 2: the harvest. But yeah, so the whole process involved initially
Speaker 2: like carving out that pulpy part of the fruit, boiling it,
Speaker 2: skimming debris, straining out the pulp and seeds, cooking this
Speaker 2: into a thick syrup that can you know, then be
Speaker 2: used for various sweet purposes. Then water is added to
Speaker 2: the rest, which is fermented into the ceremonial wine, and
Speaker 2: then the ceremonial wine is later consumed, and then the
Speaker 2: seeds are used apparently for chicken feed, so like everything
Speaker 2: ends up being used for something.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, I was actually just scoogling something on
Speaker 3: the side because I remembered reading something about thal authum
Speaker 3: use of the seeds, not just the pulp of the fruit,
Speaker 3: but used of the seeds. I think like they could
Speaker 3: be ground down and used in like a porridge or
Speaker 3: something as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, Yeah, there are multiple purposes
Speaker 2: that are in play here. I've only highlighted some of
Speaker 2: the key ones. And then at the same time, you know, birds, squirrels,
Speaker 2: various organisms that we've mentioned. They're also trying to take
Speaker 2: advantage of the fruit. So there's a lot of activity
Speaker 2: around all of this. The jam crossway point shares with
Speaker 2: their primary traditional sweetener, the wild honey, could sometimes be
Speaker 2: acquired and this could sometimes be added to the syrup
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, and then like I said, it could
Speaker 2: be stored, you could use it throughout the winter, and
Speaker 2: Westerners who sampled it, they often compared it to something
Speaker 2: like raspberry jam. So just just super fascinating, Like you know,
Speaker 2: how it becomes this this you know, this the central
Speaker 2: like defining seasonal aspect of the society here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that social celebration aspect is interesting, especially in
Speaker 3: that what you were just talking about, in that it's
Speaker 3: a it's a fruit harvest that is not purely like
Speaker 3: work to store up things for later. Like you are,
Speaker 3: you are celebrating and enjoying a lot of the fruits
Speaker 3: right now in the moment of harvesting, but also gathering
Speaker 3: stuff for later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so so yeah. I just found it super
Speaker 2: interesting interesting to read about. Uh, if anyone out there
Speaker 2: listening has any connections, you know, closer connections to the practice,
Speaker 2: or certainly if we have any listeners of the that
Speaker 2: are you know, connected to the Autum tribe, certainly right
Speaker 2: in with any added details, we'd love to hear from you, please, yes, Now,
Speaker 2: before we close up this episode, I want to turn
Speaker 2: to another topic that I found really interesting that gets
Speaker 2: into the place that the sawaro has in the modern
Speaker 2: world and a world that humans continue to change. So
Speaker 2: it's important to stress that while some trees in the world,
Speaker 2: some plants are are fire resistant, some cacti are fire resistant.
Speaker 2: The prickly pear is often thrown up. There's an example
Speaker 2: of this. You know, many trees depend on the cycles
Speaker 2: of wildfires, but the sowaro is not one of them.
Speaker 2: They're highly susceptible to fire damage, and aspects of their
Speaker 2: Sonoran environment have seemingly protected them from widespread fire damage
Speaker 2: for quite a while, but this is changing due to
Speaker 2: human introduced factors. Oh interesting, yeppen at all point out
Speaker 2: that invasive grasses like red brome and buffal grass. I
Speaker 2: know buffal grass sounds super fun, but not outside of
Speaker 2: its original range. Red brome and buffal grass have greatly
Speaker 2: enhanced fire threats to the sowaro. So red brome is
Speaker 2: of Mediterranean origin, likely spread to North America as a
Speaker 2: seed contaminant during the mid eighteen hundreds. It spreads, it
Speaker 2: pushes out local grasses, and once its seeds are set,
Speaker 2: it dries out and becomes this clump of fire hazard.
Speaker 2: Red brome can handle fire on its own, but not
Speaker 2: so many of the plants it thrives among in these
Speaker 2: introduced environments in the Americas. The authors here point out
Speaker 2: that in moist Arizona deserts, range fires fueled primarily by
Speaker 2: red brome have destroyed just thousands of sworrows, among other
Speaker 2: native desert plants. Buffalo grass is African in origin and
Speaker 2: was intentionally injured introduced in the nineteen seventies by the
Speaker 2: US Department of Agriculture to improve cattle forage. And this
Speaker 2: one forms dense clumps of clumps of grass. And when
Speaker 2: these dry out, you guessed it, they're kindling for range fires.
Speaker 2: And once more we have a case where the alien
Speaker 2: grass evolved it depends on annual fires, so it's not
Speaker 2: negatively impacted by blazes. But the same is not true
Speaker 2: of the native Sonoran vegetation. It's another case where the
Speaker 2: introduction of an alien species leads to short term gains
Speaker 2: for farmers ranchers and then long term ecological damage.
Speaker 3: Now, I apologize if this just went over my head,
Speaker 3: but what is the main mechanism that these grasses make
Speaker 3: the fire more threating to the suaros? Is it just
Speaker 3: the fact that they allow fire to spread in areas
Speaker 3: where it wouldn't spread normally.
Speaker 2: Right, And then also we'll get into this in just
Speaker 2: a second, but it also comes down to how it
Speaker 2: in a broader sense, it disrupts the sort of natural
Speaker 2: spacing that prevents wildfires from raging in the Sonoran desert. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: So I was reading a bit about this on the
Speaker 2: website of the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and they write, quote,
Speaker 2: unprecedented large scale fires in recent years, especially in twenty
Speaker 2: five and twenty twenty, have been driven by the exponential
Speaker 2: expansion of introduced invasive species. An ecological transition from desert
Speaker 2: scrub to grassland has begun, which creates management and societal
Speaker 2: challenges as fire becomes a part of the ecology of
Speaker 2: the Sonoran Desert.
Speaker 3: Okay, so these invasive grasses and other invasive plants change
Speaker 3: the spatial arrangement of fuel sources in the landscape exactly.
Speaker 2: So Traditionally, they point out, the Sonoran Desert is characterized
Speaker 2: by quote an openness of inherent patchiness and vegetation. So
Speaker 2: you have, you know, like I was saying, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of life out there, and you know, you can
Speaker 2: compare to the bottom of the sea or what have you.
Speaker 2: You have large areas of bare ground between vegetation areas
Speaker 2: which provide quote insufficient continuity of fuel for fire. And
Speaker 2: this has seemingly protected the desert habitat here at least
Speaker 2: for the last century and probably longer. I you know,
Speaker 2: as I'll bring up again here, there's there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of great historical evidence of past forest fires to
Speaker 2: really lean on here, but that's everyone's best guess. So
Speaker 2: for instance, in the last episode we mentioned lightning strikes
Speaker 2: on Solorrows. Well, if it's such a strike were to
Speaker 2: produce fire, it would, at least with a historical situation,
Speaker 2: it would be far less life to spread to the
Speaker 2: next island of vegetation in this sort of sprawling archipelago
Speaker 2: of vegetation clumps. You know, so like here's kind of
Speaker 2: like one island of some cacti and desert plants, but
Speaker 2: then there's there's kind of like a natural barrier to
Speaker 2: a to a wildfire. There's like nothing between it and
Speaker 2: the next area. And this would be like the sort
Speaker 2: of natural built in protection that these plants have adapted
Speaker 2: to thrive in. I see. Yeah, yeah. So the authors
Speaker 2: here point out that the fire return intervals here are
Speaker 2: estimated to exceed one hundred to one thousand years, though
Speaker 2: again these models haven't been tested due to the lack
Speaker 2: of evidence for historical fires, but they really drive home
Speaker 2: the changes that have occurred and the changes that are
Speaker 2: continuing to occur in this region, thus requiring just an
Speaker 2: evolving counterfire protocol, like what we used to do just
Speaker 2: won't work anymore, and you know, having to do things
Speaker 2: it would not have been necessarily necessary previously they were write. Quote.
Speaker 2: In addition to fires in desert valleys and flats, a
Speaker 2: new fire mosaic is being established in the region whereby
Speaker 2: wildfires driven by invasive grasses can spread from the forested
Speaker 2: mountains to the desert valleys and vice versa. Yikes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so just again, you throw in these these invasive plants
Speaker 2: and they just begin to change things in such a
Speaker 2: dramatic fashion. And we've talked about invasive desert plants before.
Speaker 2: We did episodes on the tumbleweed, which is itself despite
Speaker 2: the fact that it is in many ways as iconic
Speaker 2: as the suaros, like a symbol of the American desert,
Speaker 2: but it itself, it has its origins on another continent.
Speaker 2: It is, it is not a native species.
Speaker 3: It's funny that connection because the tumbleweed also plays an
Speaker 3: interesting role in the spread of fire and like prairie
Speaker 3: areas where it can be known as a fire break jumper,
Speaker 3: where like, you know, a tumbleweed can catch fire and
Speaker 3: then leap over fire breaks to you know, set flame
Speaker 3: to new areas.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so, uh yeah, I found this very fascinating. Now,
Speaker 2: on top of this, this is not the only threat in
Speaker 2: place yet. Men and all also point out that, of course,
Speaker 2: climate change is a big one. We've touched on that already.
Speaker 2: We've talked about how you know, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: the Souarro is doing well, and you know it has
Speaker 2: its its niche and is the you know, kind of
Speaker 2: the king of the Sonoran Desert. At the same time,
Speaker 2: you know it's it's sensitive, it can things can easily
Speaker 2: easily be thrown out of whack. There. On top of that,
Speaker 2: you still have the threat of habitat destruction. At the
Speaker 2: time of the riding, they indicated that most of the
Speaker 2: threat was further south in Mexico. Again, we've stressed like
Speaker 2: the various protections that are in place and have been
Speaker 2: successfully put in place in Arizona for a while. But again,
Speaker 2: you had that protection in place, it doesn't protect them
Speaker 2: from things like introducing an invasive grass for cattle that
Speaker 2: ends up being a threat. And then they also point
Speaker 2: out that you end up having illegal trade in sorrow
Speaker 2: ribs for use in furniture. So it's important to note
Speaker 2: here that dead soarrows are also protected. So just because
Speaker 2: the plant's dead doesn't mean you have right to go
Speaker 2: out and start ripping it apart and taking the ribs away.
Speaker 2: But since the ribs have been used in furniture and
Speaker 2: have this unique look, it ends up encouraging a poaching
Speaker 2: and killing trade where people are going out and acquiring
Speaker 2: these ribs in ways they shouldn't.
Speaker 3: Right, So if there's an active market for it, even
Speaker 3: just created by dead ribs that have been scavenged, that
Speaker 3: creates an incentive for poaching of live ones.
Speaker 2: Right, And you know I would I'm just guessing here.
Speaker 2: I don't think they mentioned the sowarrow boot, but obviously
Speaker 2: the Suarro boot is an interesting curio that is left
Speaker 2: over from a dead sarrow, and I could see that
Speaker 2: being impacted as well, certainly if there was some sort
Speaker 2: of demand for those.
Speaker 3: And like the craft market, Yeah, we're all but I
Speaker 3: think we're sort of coming to the end here. But
Speaker 3: I've really enjoyed this look at Souorrow is something I
Speaker 3: didn't really know much about it all going in. But
Speaker 3: they are strange, beautiful, majestic human so so many things,
Speaker 3: and there I didn't know how much I didn't know
Speaker 3: about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel the same way. I mean, I've walked
Speaker 2: among them and I've learned about them, you know, I've
Speaker 2: read about them in the past, but I still discovered
Speaker 2: things in the research here that were entirely new to me.
Speaker 2: And so it's going to make the next time I
Speaker 2: walk among the soaro even more rewarding. All right, then, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to go and close it out. We're just
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